The surroundings of Ali Hamid’s body shop hadn’t changed since our previous visit. Autumn was a few days further along, and the trees had shed more leaves onto the roof of the RV. Soon it would be covered in snow, and Jäppinen would be shovelling himself out like a vole.
I knocked on the door. Stenman was standing behind me, as chic as ever. A half-length sheared fur had replaced the English oilskin. It looked warm and expensive, like Stenman herself. She was a little too aristocratic for my taste, but there was still something about her.
I liked her.
I said: “Take a look in the window.”
There was a curtain blocking it, but Stenman peeked through the crack.
“There’s someone in there, all right.”
I banged on the door with my fist. The tone of my banging wasn’t apologetic, it was authoritative.
“Who the hell… at this hour…”
For Jäppinen, at this hour meant nine-thirty. He clearly wasn’t a morning person.
He opened the door in his boxer shorts. His hair was sticking out all over the place, and we were assaulted by a gust of fermenting interior air.
Jäppinen noticed Stenman and blushed.
“Can’t a man even get dressed?…”
He yanked the door shut. Stenman looked at me, amused.
“Aah, the bachelor life, so glamorous and carefree.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” I agreed.
Suddenly Stenman looked thoughtful.
“That was quite a stench that wafted out. Did you smell?…”
I gave her a questioning look. Then I understood. I stepped aside and made a call.
I was hanging up just as the door opened. Jäppinen came out, fully dressed and his wet hair slicked back. Even though it was almost foggy, the light blinded him, and he squinted his night-owl eyes. Feeling his way, he cautiously lowered himself to the RV steps. His tremulous hands moved to his lap.
“You said that Ali Hamid used to work for you and then he bought the body shop?”
“That’s right.”
“How much did it cost?”
“He got a package deal: all the equipment, three lifts and the other big-ticket machines, plus all the tools, screwdrivers and everything, and a loyal customer base on top. I got three hundred and fifty thousand marks… I gave him a good-guy discount, but I respect a hard-working man, and that’s what Ali was.”
“So about sixty thousand euros.”
“Around there.”
“And he paid all at once?”
“Course. Got the papers and receipts to prove it.”
“Where did he get the money?” Stenman asked.
“The bank, I guess… or wherever people get money from… He didn’t have that kind of dough himself, they were renting, and raising a big brood like that costs a mint.”
“We believe that Hamid was dealing drugs. Did you ever see anything like that?”
Jäppinen glanced around furtively. He cleared his throat and fished a half-smoked cigarette out from his pack.
“No… no… I never did.”
“Did he give you the money in cash or was it transferred to your account?”
“My account, the whole shebang.”
“I’d like to see the receipt,” I said.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t remember where it is right now… You mind if I look for it and give you a call… I could use a lift down to the Teboil for my morning cereal.”
I looked into Jäppinen’s beady eyes and changed tack.
“I just made a call and asked a few questions about you. You’ve been convicted three times for narcotics violations. Use and smuggling.”
Jäppinen’s expression froze, then he swallowed and said: “That stuff’s ancient history. Back when I was a young…”
“I can call in a drug dog to come sniff out your RV.”
Jäppinen grew pale and his upper body swayed as if he were about to faint.
“Don’t bother. Is it really that big a deal if I take a few puffs for my own pleasure sometimes, an old man like me? Who’s getting hurt?”
“We’re interested in Hamid, not you.”
Jäppinen lit his cigarette and took his first drags of the morning.
“He was dealing hash and amphetamines. I don’t know how much, but I’d buy small amounts from him sometimes. He said he’d quit as soon as he got his finances in order. He used to send money back to just about his entire extended family in Iraq or wherever it is Kurds live these days.”
“What about his cousin Tagi?”
“Yeah, he was in on it too.”
“Anyone else? The killings might have something to do with the drugs.”
“He said the drugs came from Spain and Morocco. I don’t know who he bought them from, not a Finn at least. Could we—”
“Just one more question. Did you see anything that evening when Ali and Wasin were killed? Think carefully; you don’t want to make the biggest mistake of your life.”
“Two cars… and a few guys… a white van and a Passat.”
I had a photo of Oxbaum’s stolen Nissan in my pocket. I showed it to Jäppinen.
“That’s what it looked like at least. I remember the plate number, it was JFK-37. JFK are the initials of that Yankee president and thirty-seven happens to be the year I was born.”
“What about the Passat?”
“Dark and a diesel. Didn’t see the plates.”
“But you saw the men?” Stenman suggested.
“The white van came first, but I didn’t see when it came. I only saw when the guys were leaving. The yard lights are pretty bad and I couldn’t see very well, but I heard them talking in some foreign language, I don’t know which one. I thought they were Ali’s or Wasi’s Arab buddies.”
“Do you remember any words?”
“I’d been drinking a little that day and I had just woken up. My head’s like a Swiss cheese when that happens. The guys got out of the car and drove away, and I didn’t give the whole thing any more thought. I went to Teboil, and when I got back, I had a couple of beers to take the edge off and then I cracked open the vodka. The Passat showed up almost right after. There were two men in it. I saw them go into the shop. While they were in there, I headed around back to take a leak, and when they came out I heard one of them saying fuck and shit over and over and call someone. He was looking around, but luckily there weren’t any lights on in my RV, and he didn’t see me.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that Ali was dead and asked what they should do. Whoever was at the other end must have said something, I guess, because he answered that there are only two options. Then he said they needed to meet that night and rethink the whole thing. That was it. The guys got in the car and drove off.”
“What did you do?” Stenman asked.
“Got tanked and didn’t wake up until you came knocking on my door.”
“I don’t know anything about my husband’s money. He worked hard and was frugal; he saved every mark.”
Hamid’s wife had already got over the worst of her shock. She had been forced to. Even though her husband was dead, she still had four children who required her attention. The children were at school and the apartment was quiet. Hamid’s photograph was on the living-room table; a candle burnt in front of it.
“The body shop cost sixty-thousand euros,” Stenman pointed out.
“Maybe he borrowed the money from one of his friends… He didn’t get it from the bank… I would have known about that.”
“Did you have a joint bank account?”
“No. I have my own account, and my husband gave me money when I needed it.”
“Do you know how much money is in your husband’s account?”
“Yes. The bank sends the statements here.”
“Could we have them?”
Hamid’s widow walked over to the living-room bookcase and pulled out a black plastic folder from the bottom drawer.
“What will you do with the company?”
“I will try to sell it.”
“Who handles the company’s books?”
“I don’t remember her name, but it’s in the papers.”
The woman suddenly looked anguished and tired.
“How have you been managing? Is there anything we could help you with?” Stenman asked.
“No thank you. I will be fine. I have to be strong for the children.”
“Has anything new come to mind that might be of interest to us?”
“No…”
Then she appeared to remember something.
“There is one thing. Two days before Ali’s death, a Finnish man called here asking for him. He didn’t tell me his name. I asked him to call Ali’s mobile phone or the shop, but the man said that no one was answering at either. The man left a message for Ali and asked me to tell him that it was about the rental car.”
“Did he leave his number?”
“He just asked Ali to call.”
“Could the caller have been one of the customers from the body shop?”
“No, Ali didn’t give out our home number to them. It was unlisted.”
“What did he say when you mentioned it to him?”
“Nothing, but he went immediately into the other room and called from there with his mobile.”
“Did you hear what he was talking about?”
“I heard him say that he didn’t want to get mixed up in it any deeper. That he just wanted to warn him, but that he couldn’t help out any more. Then he hung up.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about the call earlier?” I asked.
The woman looked frightened.
“Did I make a mistake? I’m sorry… the caller was Finnish, and you just asked about his friends and a man who spoke English and Arabic.”
“Did you know that your husband’s cousin Tagi used drugs?”
“Yes, my husband told me, he was afraid… he was afraid that Tagi would get caught and he would drag his relatives into it.”
“Did your husband know where he got the drugs from?”
“No, he said that he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He believed that using drugs was against the Koran.”
Stenman drove and I studied Hamid’s papers. According to the last statement, there had been slightly over fourteen thousand euros in Hamid’s account. The withdrawals and deposits appeared normal.
I looked through the company papers, but I couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary in them either. I couldn’t find any loan papers, nor was there anything else that would have explained where the money necessary to buy the body shop would have come from. Among the papers was a copy of the power of attorney granted to the bookkeeping company. I called information and asked for the bookkeeper’s number and called her. She was suspicious and called back through the police switchboard. The firm had one fifty-thousand-euro loan that had been taken out from an Estonian finance company.
“The name of the company?”
“Baltic Invest.”
“Are there any names on the loan papers?”
“The usual ones. The CFO of the company and so on, in other words the party granting the loan… and here are the names of the Finnish intermediary company and contact person.”
“You mind giving them to me?”
“Kafka & Oxbaum, Attorneys at Law. Evidently Eli Kafka, Esq., has acted as the contact person.”
“As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t disqualify you, but let’s let Simolin look into any matters related to the company,” Huovinen said from the window. Whenever faced with a difficult decision, he would stand up, conduct a visual inventory of the room’s furnishings, and go stare out the window.
“The bureau’s white-collar-crime unit has good contacts in Estonia, the police and the tax authorities. If there’s anything fishy about the company, it’ll come out.”
“How could Hamid have known about Baltic Invest?” I asked, mostly rhetorically.
“Word probably gets passed around the immigrant community. Maybe he couldn’t get a loan here and decided to get one from Estonia.”
“The wife didn’t know anything about the loan. And Hamid didn’t have any collateral.”
“I think that’s normal in that culture. And maybe the company and its inventory covered the collateral. The loan’s not very big. Or else some friend of Hamid backed it.”
My conception of the Hamid cousins, especially Ali, had already gone through the wringer several times. At first he was an upstanding family man, Muslim, and a hard-working entrepreneur, then he turned into a drug peddler and a SUPO snitch. I remembered what Hussein Mahmed had said about him: Hamid was a dangerous man.
If Klein, as head of security at the Israeli embassy, hadn’t so conveniently joined in the chorus, I would have been sure this was just an everyday case of drug-related crime.
19
My uncle’s apartment occupied a third of his building’s top floor. The living room gave onto the sea, and through the trees you could make out the rowing stadium and the marina, which was buzzing with autumnal activity. In 1992, it had got down to seventeen degrees below freezing on the night of 15 October, and the shoreline had frozen. Boaters were a long-memoried lot; they hadn’t forgotten. They wanted to get their boats onto dry land and up for the winter in plenty of time.
There was a fireplace in the living room, in front of it a cigarette table and two well-worn club chairs, the kind inhabited by gentlemen in smoking jackets and silk scarves in old-fashioned advertisements. The chairs smelt of cigars, even though my uncle had stopped smoking years ago, when his asthma started getting bad. Maybe he allowed his guests to smoke so he could catch just a tiny whiff of the pleasure he had lost.
I was sitting in one of the chairs, waiting for my uncle to get ready.
“Which one would you choose?”
My uncle showed me two ties. One was burgundy, the other one dark grey.
“The red one.”
My uncle put on the burgundy tie and flashed himself a smile so broad that his gold-bound ivories winked in the mirror.
“Ready.”
When I rose from the chair, it made a hissing noise as the leather, freed from the pressure, sucked in air.
I helped my uncle on with his overcoat.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about this case of yours, but all I can say is that it’s about something major. What you told me about your brother came as no surprise. I had heard about his affairs. Yet the fact that one of the men who was killed was a client of his is still a shock.”
“To me too. And an exceptionally unpleasant one.”
“You can rest assured that your brother doesn’t have anything to do with the murder. He wouldn’t dare to be involved in anything like that.”
“I believe that, but he might not have any idea of what he’s involved in.”
“It’ll provide a nice topic of conversation for this evening, anyway,” my uncle grunted. “Sorry to joke about such a serious matter, but Eli and murder don’t really add up.”
I agreed. But I still wasn’t amused.
By the time we arrived at Eli’s, the other guests were already there. Eli’s wife Silja received us, hugging my uncle first and then me.
“It’s wonderful you could make it, even though you’re so busy at work.”
If I had a line-up of middle-aged women in front of me that included one millionaire, Silja wouldn’t have been the first one I would have pegged. She was a big-boned brunette who at first glance called to mind a farmer’s wife. But if you looked closely, you could find small, subtle hints of wealth. When a woman could devote infinite attentions to her wellbeing, it had to show somewhere. In addition to everything external, she possessed the unassuming confidence that old money conferred.
I had always liked Silja. She was friendly and had a good sense of humour and a mind of her
own.
Eli’s well-bred children Ethel and Leo, my godson, also came out to greet us.
Eli introduced Max to our uncle.
“You remember Max Oxbaum, don’t you, Uncle Dennis?”
“Do you think I’m losing my memory?”
“Of course not.”
I knew that my uncle didn’t care for Max. I wasn’t sure why, maybe for the simple reason that Max was arrogant, smug and loud. Any one of those traits would annoy most people, and Max had them all in one package. The combination, especially when bolstered by considerable financial success, was tough to stomach.
Max was so wound up that his tiny wife Ruth found it almost impossible to step out from behind her husband.
I considered Ruth a freak of nature. Nothing else could explain her unstinting admiration for Max, no matter what he did. Ruth treated Max like a mother would a son, not like a wife would a husband. Even if Max had been caught at the scene of a murder holding a smoking gun, Ruth would instantly believe that sweet little Max had been framed. Or if she had surprised him on top of a whore, she would have insisted that Max had simply slipped and fallen with his zipper down.
Eli poured us all a drink and then walked up to me.
“Would you come here for a minute?”
He took me by the shoulder and dragged me into his office.
“As your older brother, I’d like to give you some advice. You probably don’t understand how much bad blood your behaviour has aroused.”
“What do you mean?”
“Silberstein was so outraged that he’s going to write about you in the congregation newspaper… according to him, by refusing to cooperate and withholding information, you’ve endangered the entire synagogue. In addition, the Israeli ambassador has lodged an unofficial complaint with us about the behaviour of the Finnish police, and by that he means you.”
I could only imagine the kind of article Silberstein would hack out in his fury. He was not known for his diplomacy. That didn’t bother me in the least. But it did bother me that Eli was dressing me down as if he were my boss.
Nights of Awe Page 19